What is Power BI?

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft’s Power BI, then you might wonder what exactly this tool is. Power BI is a business intelligence tool that allows you to create reports using various data sources and analysis tools. The tools include interactive dashboards, Streaming analytics, and formula language.

Self-service BI in the cloud

With self-service BI, users can generate custom reports and analytics to make timely and informed decisions. Generating these reports and analytics in the cloud allows users to take action confidently, yielding progressive business results. Self-service BI in the cloud can drastically change the world of BI. Newly developed cloud applications offer similar functionality to leading BI products at an affordable price.

While self-service BI has many benefits, it can be intimidating to learn how to use it. The key to self-service Power BI success is a data governance strategy. By building a data governance strategy in advance, business users can explore datasets, run queries, and customize data visualization and dashboards.

Another common challenge is data security. If data security protections and governance policies aren’t in place, unauthorized users could access sensitive data. This could potentially violate corporate ethics standards and data privacy regulations. Furthermore, uncontrolled deployments can get out of hand without centralized monitoring and become chaotic. Further, multiple BI tools in the same organization can lead to inconsistent data and reports and make scaling self-service capabilities difficult.

Interactive dashboards

Interactive dashboards on Power BI give business users a visual way to examine data. Often, users want to understand how much power their business uses, and a dashboard can provide the answers. Power BI dashboards can help users monitor energy usage and reduce costs. One such dashboard is the Sales Scorecard, which enables companies to answer critical questions about their sales performance. The dashboard allows users to see sales by region, product, profitability, and profit.

An interactive dashboard allows users to explore data from many different perspectives. By letting them zoom in and explore various time intervals, users can easily see relevant information without being overwhelmed by data. Interactive dashboards also allow users to filter and remove parameters they don’t need to see. Therefore, making a dashboard intuitive and easy to use is essential.

Power BI also lets users change the look and feel of their dashboards. They can choose from the pre-designed themes or download custom themes from Microsoft’s Themes Library. A customized theme can help users differentiate their dashboards based on a project or company. For example, a company might have one dashboard for monthly expenses and another for sales and profits.

Streaming analytics

You can quickly implement a data stream if you want to run your real-time analysis in Power BI. Streaming data can be generated using DirectQuery or Live connections. The first step is to create a new dataset in Power BI. Choose the name of the dataset and table. Once you have done that, click Create.

Streaming analytics is the process of using machine learning algorithms and AI to analyze data in real-time. Streaming data comes from multiple sources, such as IoT devices, hardware sensors, and transactional data. These data streams are often updated, and their relevance ebbs and flows. Consequently, they cannot be split up and processed in batches.

Streaming datasets are the easiest way to visualize real-time data. With these, you can connect data from multiple sources and then use them to create reports. These datasets come with different configurations and setups.

Formula language

Power BI allows users to define custom calculations. This can be done with DAX, the native language of Microsoft’s query tools. The DAX language consists of expressions, formulas, and conditional statements. It can also be used to write calculated columns and measures. In addition, it follows a specific syntax and evaluation order.

DAX is a powerful formula language that can be used in Power BI. It can dramatically improve your insights from data. It is easy to learn and is an extension of the MDX language. It is also compatible with SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular models. You can use DAX to create data models and reports. This tool allows you to make powerful calculations and explore data through rich visualizations.

There are many functions in Power BI. The DAX language provides easy access to many of the most common functions. In addition, the DAX language supports various aggregate functions and can also be used to create new columns. The DAX language also has several aggregate functions similar to those in Excel.